I think student loan forgiveness is a bad idea that is only going to make the problem worse

Not only that, but I feel as though it is a mad scramble to attempt to purchase votes and align people with a particular party rather than it actually being something that is meant to benefit the people. I don't want to get too much into the political side of things but there is one thing that I know is true in this situation: University education in the United States started becoming wildly expensive right around the time that the government started getting involved in the financing of it. Prior to that and prior to when I was of college age, higher education was abundant, competitive, and outside of a few elitist schools, it was affordable. Now it is just abundant.

This is a continuation of what I wrote yesterday, because I had more to say about it.

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I'm a big believer in that there is no such thing as "free" and this is especially true when it comes from the hands of the government. Sure they make it appear free, but they just don't like to talk a great deal about how everyone is paying for it.

Now even though I am really against almost all government programs there are some people out there that will say what I consider to be rather silly things like "it is only going to cost $60 a person!" or something along the lines that if you don't want to help others get ahead in life you are a terribly selfish person. These are terrible arguments if you actually take a look at the underlying problems with higher education in the United States. These organizations are there to make money, they always have been that way. There might be an altruistic place of education here and there but for the most part, colleges in the US and around the world have to remain profitable and man oh man are they really good at making that happen.

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I'm not going to look up the exact date but there was a time back when those two lines were roughly in the same place on the chart that the US government decided to get involved in college finance and thereby guaranteed that everyone could go to college regardless of their financial means to do so. Lo' and behold, the years that followed resulted in colleges increasing their tuition costs because they no longer needed to compete with other institutions based on price. This is why when you visit colleges today they all seem to be building more and more impressive buildings and monuments that cost a pretty penny. They need to appear to be a better place than their competitors and this comes at the cost of ever-rising tuition.

When you create a situation where the seller of something needn't be concerned with how much their product costs because every potential customer is going to be guaranteed the money necessary to pay for it, the college no longer really concerns themselves with their prices. I remember the Financial Aid office at my university was an absolutely massive office on campus where the people working there would do all of the necessary paperwork for you in order to insure that YOU got YOUR money. The people in there know exactly where that money is going and that is why they have people on staff to make sure that you are able to get this money.

Forgiving student loans is an insult to people like myself that took out the minimum that they needed and then paid it back the way the program was originally touted as being. These days, there is more student loan debt in America than all credit card debt.

I'll agree that at least on its face the original intent behind giving everyone access to a college education was at least in part a noble one. I just have a problem with the fact that over the years universities almost became a scam of sorts because they no longer had to deliver the highest quality product at the lowest possible price. They needed to spend huge amounts of money creating the illusion of excellence so that they could get you in the door. Once you are there they know that money will never be an issue so they don't have to ever try to keep costs low. The fact that every university has a team of people charged with "finding money" for the students speaks volumes IMO.

When you have something that egregiously overpriced, transferring the cost of said thing to the general public doesn't address the true root of the problem. In fact, I predict that it is going to make the problem worse because now not only do universities still get to charge whatever they want for their services, but lenders now feel as though they aren't taking on a real risk when they loan the money. I feel as though the college conundrum is probably too messed up to fix but simply throwing money at it, which is all the government ever really does, isn't going to correct the situation but rather, it is just going to put a bandage on a infected wound that is going to come back in 10-20 years as a much bigger problem than it already is.